


Unwitnessed

by Seraina (seraina_doom)



Series: Burnt Out [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pregnancy, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4256736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraina_doom/pseuds/Seraina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s not supposed to look for him. Furiosa tells her he’s not following; he rolled the rig and went on to Valhalla. Only, there’s no Valhalla anymore, just the dead and the dying. One of the Vulvalini and a couple of the former Milk Mothers know enough medicine to patch up the injured and tend the sick. But she finds herself here, every morning, looking along the makeshift infirmary for her War Boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwitnessed

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to Burning at Both Ends, but that is not required reading.

She watches the crowd of Boys shuffle inside the large stone cavern. Furiosa says this used to be the fighting pits, where a strange sort of entertainment and justice grew. She pushes that out of her mind and scans the bald and battered War Boys for the distinct V8 scar and blue, blue eyes. The stragglers after the rig went into the side of the canyon started streaming in a few days ago, fourteen days since the women took over. They have yet to name themselves as they stir up the filth and dust from the Citadel’s former regime. 

She’s not supposed to look for him. Furiosa tells her he’s not following; he rolled the rig and went on to Valhalla. Only, there’s no Valhalla anymore, just the dead and the dying. One of the Vulvalini and a couple of the former Milk Mothers know enough medicine to patch up the injured and tend the sick. But she finds herself here, every morning, looking along the makeshift infirmary for her War Boy.

 

She sees him on the twentieth day. He’s found himself a corner to curl into, bandages wrapped around his head and arms. He’s hooked up to a Donor. That’s what they are now, not Blood Bags, Donors that willingly share their blood with others for more rations. He’s unconscious, but she watches him sleep, careful not to wake him. He needs to regain his strength. She will find him again.

He’s gone the next day, found another place to sleep, away from the crowd and press of War Boys still trying to deal with the death of their god. It makes sense, he was the one that traitored them. He kept most of them from getting home. She can’t blame him for hiding. They’ll forget about it eventually, when they realize how much better things can be.

She speaks with The Ace in the garages on day thirty-three. None of the other Boys have seen him, but she’s sure he’s still here. He wouldn’t have left. That night, she wakes in her newly claimed bedroom to his blue eyes. He presses his fingers to his lips, not wanting to wake anyone up if she decided to raise the alarm.

“Shhhh. Capable… I heard you were asking about me and… I’m not…” His words fall out of his mouth in a fumbled rush. He’s curled beside her bed on the floor, rocking back and forth, like he was on the rig. “I traitored them Capable. No one will ride with me now. I’m cast out. They won’t Witness me. Not at all. I am Unwitnessed!”

“Nux, these are lies. Joe’s filthy lies. I see you. You’re here with me now.” She reaches out to touch him and he flinches back, as if afraid that she would be tainted by his punishment.

“No! No. Don’t you see? It’s not just… the Immortan. I crashed the rig. I caused the rockfall. I killed the ones in that crash and the rest were left to die in the wastes. I should have died but Valhalla spit me out again. I see why now, I’m being punished.” He slides across the room, his back against the wall, a look of utter despair on his face.

“You saved us. You saved us all. Some died, yes, but everyone here now… they want change. Freedom.” She sits on the floor facing him.

“You think things can really be changed?” He looks at her with such a terrified expression. 

She crawls closer to him. “Of course, of course. Look how much you changed. Before you know it, everything will be different.”

He flashes her a wide smile and jumps up. “I need to go.” He runs past her, the breeze from his passing toss her curls.

She smiles and climbs back in her bed and sleeps easier, wishing that Nux had stayed, but comforted that he came to visit her at last.

 

Forty-three days and she realizes she hasn’t bled since before their escape. She runs to Furiosa and one of the Vulvalini who has taken up doctoring. She submits to the testing and sure enough, she’s pregnant. But she’s bled between the last time Joe favored her and their escape, so that could only mean one thing. Her and Nux’s rushed fumbling in the back of the rig is finally catching up to her. She hadn’t even realized what they’d done, what she made him do until after the rig jerked to the right and she watched him flip.

The Boys were still keeping up their game. No one spoke of Nux. No one could remember if they saw him. No one cared. Furiosa tells her to just calm down. Everything will be fine. When she returns to her room, Nux is there, huddled in the corner. 

“Nux! I’ve been looking for you.” She crouches down in front of him but keeps some space between. She doesn’t want him to run off like he did before. 

“Please stop. Please. You’re not supposed to look for me. I’m Unwitnessed and I don’t want you to… to be in trouble,” his whole body shakes and he folds in on himself, just as sad and desperate as when they first met. 

“But, how will I see you? Where do you go all day? What have you been doing?” Questions spill from her lips before she can get to the news that she meant to tell him.

“I’ll… I’m really not supposed to be here. But… I can come here. If you want me to.” He flashes her a shaky grin and unfolds a little, still careful not to touch her. “I haven’t really been doing anything. Just… not being seen.” He shrugs a little.

“There’s so much going on that I want to tell you about.” She inches closer, but stops when he flinches. “Do you remember… what we did in the back of the rig?” She has to ask because sometimes she thinks it was just a dream. A fantasy that she made up during the terrifying rush of their escape. She regrets it now, feeling that she probably forced him by not telling him what she was truly doing to him.

“When we rutted? Thought you’d killed me.” He nods. “Never felt like that before.” 

How? How could she tell him? How could she even explain the process? Why was what she made him do good and what Joe made her do bad? 

“I liked it… but we can’t do it again.” He squeezes his arms tighter around his knees and presses his face down. Her heart ached at his strange self-imposed isolation. It only made her want to touch him more; hold him until he felt wanted and loved. She wanted him. She loved him.

“I’m pregnant.” She says, waiting for him to acknowledge it. What they’d done together.

He picks his head up and looks at her. “Like The Dag?” 

“I… yes. Like Dag. Only it isn’t Immortan Joe’s.” She hopes he makes the connection on his own. 

“I’m not breeding stock.” It’s the same thing he said to her on the rig. He didn’t think he was able to reproduce. Joe’s lies infect everyone.

“You don’t have to be. We did something together, because we wanted to.” She wants him to understand that he is not a thing either. People are people. People don’t have quality ratings to them. “I don’t regret it.”

His expression is both ecstatic and terrified and dejected all at once. He takes a long, shuddering breath. “I have to go now.” 

She hates it, but she moves aside, letting him slip out of her room and into the quiet corridors. She rests her hand on her flat belly and hopes, really and truly hopes that Nux comes back tomorrow.

 

One hundred fifty-seven days and she feels just awful. Nux has been making sporadic visits, usually just before or just after she falls asleep or wakes up. Always in her room before she notices him open the door. Today she doesn’t feel well enough to leave her bed. 

He hovers just outside of her reach. “Capable?”

“Hmm?” She turns her eyes towards him, trying to see past his worry.

He drops down onto the floor, curling up on the pallet she leaves out for him beside her bed. “When will it happen?”

“About a hundred days or so. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.” She rests her hands against the place their baby is kicking. “Are you sure you don’t want to feel?”

He gives a defeated sigh. “Stop being cruel. You know I can’t.”

“Nobody is stopping you! I don’t care if no one else wants to see you. I’m here. I see you. I want to see you. I… I need you, Nux.” She breaks down in sobs and she can see his hands hover over her. So close and yet… he still will not touch her. She rolls over on her side, facing away from him. 

“I… I wish you didn’t.” 

His whisper cuts through her heart. She feels like she’s been run over by the war rig. Some time later, Cheedo comes in and finds her sobbing. 

Nux is gone.

 

Two hundred seventeen days and she calls for Dag and Cheedo. It is too soon. Much too soon, but her baby is coming NOW. She wants Nux. Wants him her with her so badly, but he hasn’t visited her since the night she cried. She’s seen him in flashes, his face in a crowd of white-painted boys or peeking out behind corners. Once she sees him in the linen closet, but it was too soon after their fight. She pretended he wasn’t there and went on about her day.

But now she is scared. Terrified. Deep inside her heart she knows there’s something wrong. She wants what they had in the rig. She was not afraid then.

There is much more pain than she remembers. Things move much faster than when Dag’s baby girl was born. The women above her look concerned, worried, terrified and Toast is the one that grabs her hand. “Capable, the baby has turned. If it does not come soon, we’ll have to cut it out. Do you understand?”

She squeezes Toast’s hand and nods. “Y-yes.” She looks over Furiosa’s shoulder to see Nux’s pale face in the background. He is keeping quiet. Staying out of the way. The others are so focused on her that he is all but invisible.

She focuses on Nux’s blue eyes as the women hold her down. She drinks the bitter concoction to take the pain away. The Vulvalini healer, Auntie, prepares the knife. “Nux…” she whispers as she’s pulled into the blackness.

She comes around in fuzzy patches, seeing the worried faces of her sisters and friends. They distract her with small talk. Tell her how she’ll be better soon. She can’t stay awake long enough at first to argue with them. 

Eventually the fog clears enough that she finally asks Cheedo about her baby. Her youngest sister squirms under the weight of the question. “He’s with Nux.”

She relaxes, Nux… surely he’s done with his game now. He would not abandon their baby while she was too out of her mind with pain. “Bring him in then.”

“Capable…” she warns and stands, “You really need your rest. I’ll be in later.” Cheedo flees and Capable frowns. Her whole body aches and hurts. She misses her baby. She misses Nux’s presence even though it infuriates her.

“Capable?”

Nux stands beside the bed, a bundle in his arms. He looks down at the infant with wonder.

“Nux! Bring him here please, I want to hold him.” She smiles, holding her arms out to him.

He takes a step back and shakes his head. “I can’t.”

She struggles to sit up and blinks her confusion at him. “What do you mean you can’t?”

He holds the baby close to his scarred chest. “I can’t, Capable. There are Rules!”

She puts her feet on the floor and pulls herself upright. “I don’t care about your stupid rules, Nux. Give me my baby!” She takes a shaking step towards him, continues forward until he is backed up against the door.

“The living cannot Witness the dead!” He shakes and cries, and holds the baby closer. Her baby. Their baby. Cries and cries.

Capable sinks to her knees on the floor, watching Nux comfort the infant. Furiosa flings the door open and walks right through him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

She looks from Nux to Furiosa. “What happened? Please.” She clings to the former Imperator and sobs, digging her fingers into the older woman’s shirt.

“Capable… it was too early. I’m sorry, but he didn’t make it.”

 

Three hundred sixty-five days since Nux rolled the rig and was crushed to death, Capable wanders the upper Citadel like a specter. Nux follows her sometimes. He falls in step beside her with their son. He says he named the boy Bolt because it seemed they were stuck together, held in limbo by some unknown force.

Sometimes Bolt is an infant, but lately he’s been appearing on his own as a child. He is painted like a War Pup, even though the children have stopped painting themselves. She stands on the edge of the garden, her toes hanging off the side of the cliff. She just needs to take that last step and she can be with them. Her boys.

“Capable please, let us go and move on with your life! You’re the one keeping us here! Please! Please!” Nux begs, reaching out to her at last, but his pale fingers only pass through her arm. “You don’t want to be here. Watching without being able to touch.”

“I just want to be with you. Don’t you understand? I don’t care if we’re all… ghosts. I don’t care if I have to die. What was it? I live. I die. I live again?” Her voice is bitter, angry. She’s been angry since her son was born. Even angrier that no one had bothered to tell her he died either.

“Let us go… we’re not meant for this world. And you aren’t meant for ours.” His blue eyes look at hers. 

She turns from Nux and Bolt and prepares to throw herself off the cliff like she intended, but a strong hand gripped her arm. Another pair of hands wrap around her torso. She finds herself folded in between Toast and Dag, both of them bracing against each side so that she can’t throw herself from the cliff. “Shh, Capable. It’ll be alright. No needless killing, remember?”

“But…” Capable croaks and looks at Dag and Toast helplessly. Nux and Bolt are nowhere to be found.

“Let’s get you back to bed.” Dag whispers comforting words and Toast wraps her arms around Capable’s shoulders.

She allows her sisters to settle her in the bed between them. She falls asleep without Nux staring at her.

Right before she drifts off, she can hear a child whisper. “We’ll be okay Mummy. Don’t hurry.”

She cries into her pillow and it hurts.

It hurts to give them up.

But she has to.

Nux wanted her to live. And she needed to start doing that. If not for herself, she needs to live so that when she does see them again, she has all the more stories to tell Nux and their son.

She will live. And she will witness.

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been different to write. Ever since I started writing in this fandom, I wanted to do a story where Nux is a ghost.


End file.
